Strung together on a thread
by if-llamas-could-fly
Summary: Dean tells Sam to pick a hemisphere. He chooses Detroit. He thinks that maybe that decision shouldn't be so easy.


**A/N I have an unhealthy obsession with Endverse and Yes!fics. I need help. **_~Sammy_

_000_

**_Strung together on a thread_**

It's forty degrees in Detroit, the night Sam walks to his death.

Or, well, to the _world's _death.

The apartment is cold, and the air only cools further the deeper he goes. Frost crackles over the final door, and his fingers are numb as he pushes it open.

Lucifer turns away from the window at the end of the room and smiles, wide and thin and cold. The sores on his face stretch and crack open again, the air reeks of sweet rot. "Sam." he says, the name warm on his lips. "You're finally here. I was waiting for you."

He tilts his head and frowns, bland curiosity coloring his tone. "I must admit though, I expected your brother to come along right behind you. Dean is like a rather persistent stray puppy, don't you think? All good intentions and little accidents."

Sam curls his hand into a fist, ignoring the dry blood that smells like hell (like _heaven_) as it flakes off his skin. He presses his lips together. Takes a deep breath. Counts to ten. "Dean and I aren't on the best of terms right now."

"Ah. Fighting, are we? Big brothers always are so bullheaded. No matter. We'll soon set them straight."

"You seem pretty sure that I'm going to say yes."

Lucifer's lips twitch into a grin. "You didn't hunt me down across three states just to see my face and say howdy, did you? Because, I must tell you Sam, that kind of dedication gives an angel all sorts of ideas."

He waves a hand in the air, "You'll say yes, Sam. One way or another. It's just a matter of waiting. And, well. I've got all the time in the world. More."

He turns back to the window and his breath fogs the glass with ice. Sam takes a step forward, and then another, legs moving unbidden, until he stands next to Lucifer and he drowns in the smell of winter and summer and thawed out decay. He shivers, flexes his fingers, tries to will his blood to stay warm, and he almost laughs because when has his blood ever been good to him?

"Dean called me a monster."

He didn't mean to say it, didn't mean to say anything, but the words are out and they hang heavy in the air, like dirty laundry and the hollow hungry stench of death.

Lucifer looks at him, brow furrowed. He takes a deep breath, and he frowns.

Sam waits for him to laugh, to gloat, to say _of course you're a monster, what else could you be?_

"You drank it." he says instead.

"What?"

"You know what."

And Sam shakes his head and tries to take a step back but he can't move and his head is spinning and he can't _breathe_ because he does know. And _god_, he wishes he didn't.

Except, if he really wished for that, he wouldn't have done it in the first place. Lucifer smiles at him, condescending and patronising and indulgent and all he can hear is the whispers of _you're mine, Sam, we'll be great together, we'll be magnificent_

Sam hasn't ever been magnificent.

Dean has, though, and that hurts in ways he doesn't even want to try and understand.

"It's okay Sam," Lucifer says, and his voice is like honey and vinegar, sweet and sharp, and he thinks that that's fitting for the angel of music, "it's not bad. It's perfect. You're perfect."

He's not, he can't be, but he just nods because it reminds him of the time Dean drove him to a bus stop and bought him a ticket and there were tears in his eyes but he didn't let them fall and instead just said _you call me when you reach California, okay Sammy?_

Lucifer's words sound like forgiveness and he hasn't been forgiven in so long he can't remember it, maybe he's never been forgiven and _fuck_, he'll take it. He'll take this damnation and this absolution and he'll drown in it and die happy and forgiven because he never learned how to swim through this shit.

So he nods and breathes and breathes and breathes and pretends he can't smell it, can't taste it, can't feel it coating the back of his throat, can't feel it thrum through his veins like electricity on water.

"You did it for me, didn't you?" Lucifer says, doesn't ask, because he says it like it's a question, but it's not. They both know it's not. It doesn't have to be.

Sam shakes his head, _no_, and that's a lie but he was six when he learned how to truth and untruth and he's been doing it his whole life, he knows how good he is at it. Not good enough to fool Dean, who knows him so well he can't even look at all the dirty pieces of him and still want to take him back. Not good enough to fool Castiel, whose touch burns in ways he doesn't like to think about and who has eyes that are piercing and flay him open right down to the cracks and shards of his self. Not good enough to fool Lucifer, who smiles like he's seen every molecule of Sam form into this mess that he's grown into, and there's nothing that's hidden from something so old and so big and so terrifying. He's good enough to fool himself, though, so he shakes his head and finally takes a step back and convinces himself that he didn't do it for Lucifer.

"I think you did."

_No._

"I think you enjoyed it."

_I didn't._

"I think you want more."

_I can't._

"I think you're here to say yes."

There's a voice in his head that sounds like Dean and it's laughing, loud and harsh, torn metal on torn metal.

"Say it."

_I don't know how_

"Just let me in."

_I don't know how_

"Stop fighting me."

_I don't know how_

"Give in."

_I don't know how_

"Let me have you."

He thinks about fighting it, for a second, but he is an insect, and Lucifer is the sun, his gaze is a magnifying glass.

He burns.

_"Yes."_

_000_

**A/N Let me know what you thought in a review! :D **_~Sammy_


End file.
